Proto-Semitic and Proto-Arabic origins of grammatical ši

Abstract

Abstract Grammatical šī in Arabic shares more surface similarities and functional affinities with Proto-Semitic 3rd person pronouns and other Semitic function words than it does with the Arabic word for ‘thing’, itself probably deriving later from an indefinite determiner šī. Of the few genuine cases of degrammaticalization, the best-supported is the movement from indefinite determiners to content words. The other functionalities of the existential particle šī arose from a Proto-Semitic demonstrative or presentative, not along a unidirectional cline but through a potentially overlapping series of lateral shifts, changes, neither more nor less grammatical, representing movement on the cline but not up or down it. The development of negative -š in Arabic conforms to Croft’s negative-indefinite cycle, not Jespersen’s.